Bridezilla

If you were considering driving over to your local video store and renting Bride and Predjudice, stop. Right now. Put the keys away, find something else to do. Trusting what I thought was reliable advice from a reasonable source, I watched this--dare I disgrace the realm of film-making by calling it a movie?--modernization of Jane Austen's classic. Talk about a wasted two hours.
The modernization wasn't all that bad. It had potential, beginning in India, with the contrast between that and Western culture. Darcy was the rich American, Lalitha was from the Indian middle class. Plus, there were many British characters. They could have gone deep, made a study of the priorities of different cultures, or stuck with the original didacticity of Austen's book. But, they chose to keep it as shallow as possible, and add music instead of meaning.
Speaking of the music, that was, in my opinion, the breaking point of the movie. The first dance sequence was interesting, decently choreographed with a little culture added. But the rest left me confounded. In an effort to be dramatic (I guess), they ruined the film. For example, when Whickham and Lalitha are walking down the beach while singing ineffective love lyrics, is it really neccessary for over a hundred blue-robed choir members to be in the background singing along? Not to mention the surfer dudes, standing, aligned, in the waves and swaying--with their boards--to the beat? And earlier in the movie, when three of the sisters are experiencing a nice musical number in the streets of India, is there a point to the flabby men wearing halter tops wihle they, uhm, serenade the girls? There too many random, tedious, and badly-written dance sequences.
Add to this uninspired dialogue, mediocre (though well cast) acting, not enough character developement at the beginning, a guitar-wielding Lalitha and an un-accented Darcy, and you have an all-around mockery of film, Jane Austen, and the entire Gem State (sorry, Napoleon overcame me...again). Come to think of it, I think the best part of Bride was listening to the British thespians fake Indian accents. Quite entertaining, indeed.

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"...an artist cannot do anything slovenly."-- Jane Austen